The threat of homegrown terrorism

Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute Sr. VP, discusses poll done on the threat of homegrown terrorism.

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Den Tandt: These seven stand good chance to lead Tories in post-Harper scenario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks in this file photo. Photo: Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press

No one knows what Stephen J. Harper will do. Nobody knows whether the prime minister will call an election early in 2015, for example, to slip a campaign through before Mike Duffy’s trial begins in April. And nobody knows when the PM will take his walk in the snow.

Should he fight and lose the next election, it’s reasonable to assume Harper will quit. Should he be reduced to a minority, the clock will start ticking in earnest. There is no pressure on him now to leave. There is no movement within his party, secret or open, to force him to consider doing so, that I am aware of.

What we can say for certain, though, is that his party is in the early stages of succession machinations. That makes this election pre-season different from previous ones. Contenders for the post-Harper Conservative leadership will be framing everything they say and do from now till election day in this light, as well as that of the campaign immediately at issue.

So, who are they?

Jason Kenney: Now minister of employment and multiculturalism, the Calgary-based MP is widely deemed to be among the government’s most capable ministers, and the front-runner to succeed Harper. As the Ipsos-Reid data set from May 2, 2011 showed (read Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s The Big Shift for a summary), the Conservative majority reached on that election day was built on an appeal to immigrants and Roman Catholics. Kenney was key in both cases. He is a single workaholic who has never bungled a major file. Last spring, he defused a potentially debilitating controversy over temporary foreign workers by, de facto, crushing the program. His forays in the Commons are invariably confident and informed.

Peter MacKay: Currently minister of justice and attorney general, the MP from Nova Scotia is always front and centre when succession talk arises, mainly because of his role as a co-founder of the modern Conservative party. MacKay has never been a Red Tory, particularly, but he’s considered the next best thing in a party dominated by more doctrinaire Alberta-based conservatives. He is the minister most closely tied to the implosion of the F-35 procurement in 2012, but has not been hurt by a major controversy since. There has been speculation that his devotion to his wife, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, and their young son, Kian, may have dulled his appetite for the crush of leadership politics. The smart money, however, says he remains in the mix.

Lisa Raitt: Smart, personable, capable and well-liked by all sides in the House of Commons — which in the toxic environment of current-day Ottawa is no small feat. She handled a number of tricky labour situations, most notably at Canada Post, with aplomb during her stint in that ministry. In the House of Commons she avoids partisan tomfoolery, sticking instead to providing answers that, more often than not, make sense. The MP for Halton, Raitt has impeccable Ontario populist credentials, coming as she does from a union family. For all these reasons, she has been touted both as a potential future Ontario Conservative leader, and potential federal Tory leader.

James Moore: The B.C. MP’s name remains in the front rank of those who may have a shot at leadership. A former radio talk show host, Moore is bilingual, under 40 and managed to stickhandle his way through a stint at Heritage without becoming despised by the CBC and cultural establishment. As Minister of Industry, he has staked his chips on representing consumers’ interests — a smart gambit, if he can be seen to deliver results. Moore also previously worked his way through a term as Harper’s House of Commons enforcer, without tarnishing his own brand — no easy task, as Paul Calandra can attest.

Tony Clement: The former Ontario health minister made his bones a decade ago with his competent handling of the SARS crisis of 2003. Now heading the Treasury Board, Clement is essentially minister of parsimony, charged with denying other ministries’ requests. Yet while at Treasury, Clement has developed a reputation for quiet efficiency, offsetting the field day had by the opposition, largely at his expense, during the G20 controversy in 2010. As an MP from north-central Ontario, he can be expected to capitalize on the Conservatives’ reliance on rural and northern Ontario seats, as a linchpin of their Ontario-Alberta coalition. Clement is one of a small number of Tory ministers who is comfortable with social media and is able to speak his mind unscripted, without courting disaster.

Michelle Rempel: Just 34, a junior minister (of state for western economic diversification) and Calgary MP Rempel has time, savvy, ambition, charisma to burn and is often mentioned as a rising star in the party. A Rempel leadership run would be a long shot for victory this time but could build a base of support for her ahead of a subsequent run.

Chris Alexander: The former diplomat is a relative newcomer to politics, having been elected for the first time in 2011. However, he has an impeccable pre-political pedigree, is fluently bilingual, charismatic, articulate and combative. Alexander would be a formidable contender, should he choose to run.

Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, resigns

By Alan Scher Zagier

FERGUSON, Mo. — The white police officer who killed Michael Brown has resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, his attorney said Saturday, nearly four months after the fatal confrontation with the black 18-year-old that fueled protests in the St. Louis suburb and across the U.S.

Darren Wilson, 28, has been on administrative leave since the shooting on Aug. 9. His resignation was announced Saturday by one of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager. The resignation is effective immediately, Bruntrager said. He declined further immediate comment but said he would release more details Saturday night.

The attorney for the Brown family, Benjamin Crump, did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment.

A grand jury spent more than three months reviewing evidence in the case before declining in November to issue any charges against Wilson. He told jurors that he feared for his life when Brown hit him and reached for his gun.

Demonstrators protest the shooting death of Michael Brown. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

The U.S. Justice Department is still conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a separate probe of police department practices.

Several protesters in Ferguson shrugged their shoulders or expressed disinterest in the news of Wilson’s resignation.

“We were not after Wilson’s job,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist, said in a statement to the AP. “We were after Michael Brown’s justice.”

Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson didn’t immediately return a message left on his cellphone seeking comment.

The shooting struck up a national debate about race and police power.

Members of the NAACP and their supporters start out for the first day of Journey for Justice, seven-day 120-mile march. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

After the shooting, Wilson spent months in hiding and made no public statements. He broke his silence after the grand jury decision, telling ABC News that he could not have done anything differently in the encounter with Brown.

Wilson said he has a clean conscience because “I know I did my job right.” Brown’s shooting was the first time he fired his gun on the job, he said.

Asked whether the encounter would have unfolded the same way if Brown had been white, Wilson said yes.

Wilson began his career in nearby Jennings before moving to the Ferguson job a few years ago. He had no previous complaints against him and a good career record, according to Police Chief Thomas Jackson, who called Wilson “an excellent police officer.”

A few months before the shooting, Wilson had received a commendation for detaining a suspect in a drug case.

Cape Breton fisherman Joseph Landry found guilty of manslaughter in death of Phillip Boudreau

The boat that Philip Boudreau was on before his death is pictured on Nov. 18, 2014. Photo: Aly Thomson/The Canadian Press/Files

PORT HAWKESBURY, N.S. — A Cape Breton fisherman was convicted Saturday of manslaughter for killing a man he said drove him into a fury after cutting his lobster traps, threatening to burn his home and years of taunting.

Joseph James Landry, 67, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the death last year of Philip Boudreau.

A jury found him not guilty on that charge but convicted him of manslaughter after a day of deliberations at the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Port Hawkesbury.

Crown prosecutor Shane Russell said outside court that Boudreau’s family was disappointed the jury didn’t convict Landry of the more serious offence.

“They heard a lot of gruesome details about what the Crown presented,” Russell said. “To find a verdict of not guilty on second degree murder … obviously they’re upset.”

Margaret Rose Boudreau, the victim’s sister, declined comment as she left the court.

Earlier this week, the jury viewed a sworn, videotaped statement Landry gave police where he said he intended “to get rid of” Boudreau. Asked by an RCMP investigator what he meant by that, Landry replied, “Kill him or whatever.”

Defence lawyer Luke Craggs said the Crown failed to prove Landry intended to kill Boudreau, calling the verdict a victory for his client.

“We can infer from the verdict that the jury said that though maybe he said he wanted to kill him, the actual physical action that caused the death of Philip Boudreau wasn’t an intentional act by James Landry,” he said.

Landry’s wife wiped her eyes crying after the verdict. Landry showed no visible reaction as he heard the jury’s decision and was remanded into custody with a sentencing hearing set for Jan. 29.

The 43-year-old Boudreau’s body hasn’t been found.

Crown attorney Steve Drake told the jury his death was the result of a sustained attack by a three-man lobster fishing crew that included Landry — one of four people charged in the case.

During the trial, Drake said the Twin Maggies rammed Boudreau’s boat three times at the mouth of Petit de Grat harbour on June 1, 2013. Prosecutors also said Landry fired four shots from a rifle, one of which hit Boudreau in the leg.

Drake told the court that Boudreau’s boat overturned after it was rammed the third time and he was then hooked with a fishing gaff and dragged out to sea before he was tied to an anchor.
Boudreau was last seen by his brother near the Petit de Grat wharf that same day just before 6 a.m.

Boudreau took his red and white speedboat out on the water and it was found overturned without its motor by a local fisherman about one hour later.

Videotaped interviews played during his trial showed Landry initially tell police he shot and rammed Boudreau’s boat after the victim cut his lobster traps and threatened to set his house on fire.

At first, Landry maintained his innocence but later changed his story, saying he fired a rifle at Boudreau four times and intended to kill him, adding he took the wheel of the Twin Maggies and ran over his boat.

“I wanted to destroy him,” says Landry, who accused Boudreau of taunting him for years. “I was seeing black. I was so mad.”

He told police he later told the crew of the Twin Maggies he had made a mistake.

“I regret it,” he tells an RCMP investigator. “I told you the truth. It’s all over now.”

The defence told the jury to discount the videotape, saying Landry was trying to take the blame for what happened to protect others on the Twin Maggies after police told him younger crew members still had their lives ahead of them.

Craig Landry, a deckhand on the Twin Maggies, testified that he did not watch as the Twin Maggies ran over Boudreau’s boat three times, though he heard three thuds.

He said Boudreau pleaded for Joseph James Landry to stop firing at him, yelling, “Stop, James! Stop!”

Craig Landry, who is Joseph James Landry’s third cousin, was previously charged with second-degree murder but that was withdrawn. He now faces a charge of accessory after the fact.

The captain of the Twin Maggies, Dwayne Matthew Samson of D’Escousse, also faces a second-degree murder charge. His wife Carla Samson, who owns the lobster boat, faces a charge of accessory after the fact. She is also the daughter of Joseph James Landry.

Those three accused have yet to stand trial.

Saskatchewan woman was one of Gadhafi’s most wanted for pushing women’s rights

Former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's most-wanted list included a Saskatchewan-born woman who advocates for women's rights. Photo: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

By Clare Clancy

Saskatchewan-born Alaa Murabit, a medical doctor and the sixth of 11 children in her family, describes herself as only an accidental activist.

“I never had any intention of being an advocate,” says Murabit, who was raised in an education-oriented family in Saskatoon before moving to Libya when she was 15.

“My parents never made any distinction between me and my brothers. That was extremely important to the way I looked at the world.”

After moving to Zawiya, Libya, however, Murabit says she grew frustrated seeing how her male counterparts were touted as examples of future ministers or doctors, while female students were relegated to the sidelines.

“I started realizing that regardless of how much I studied, or how much smarter I was than my male classmate, his opinion always trumped mine,” she said.

“I felt very much robbed of my own opportunity and my own rights.”

Murabit petitioned her university to allow women to sit on student council. At the time that was illegal.

Accidental activist or not, she soon found herself on the list of Moammar Gadhafi’s 11 most-wanted women in Zawiya.

“The idea behind it was that these women should be, if found, arrested,” she says. “We had seen what had happened to the men on the previous lists that had been released by the government at the time.”

The targeted women’s families were able to successfully hide them.

“I’m just very thankful nothing did happen.”

Libyan women in Tripoli celebrate the holding of elections in 2012. Saskatchewan-born Alaa Murabit, who moved to Libya at 15, was on former dictator Muammar Gaddafi enemies list.(AP Photo/Abdel Magid Al Fergany)

Her organization, The Voice of Libyan Women, took root during the Libyan civil war of 2011 that toppled the Gadhafi regime.

Since then, the 24-year-old has become an international voice for women’s rights and was recently appointed to a civil society advisory group with United Nations Women.

Libya is currently mired in the worst fighting since Gadhafi was overthrown and killed. On Wednesday, the U.N. Secretary General expressed deep concern about the recent escalation of violence, including air strikes on a military air base that until this week was Tripoli’s only functioning airport.

Murabit says the insecurity has placed issues of women’s rights on the back burner, but she’s pushing to keep women involved with the country’s recovery.

“People say you’ll be involved after we mediate the conflict,” she says. But “women have to be … the key resource for peace-building.”

Murabit’s organization uses religious discourse to gain local-level support. She says it’s a “radical” idea because people are often wary of incorporating religion into advocacy work.

“We use existing belief systems that (communities) already have. There are no new ideas coming from us.”

A mural of Moammar Gaddafi at a parade ground at the Khamis Brigade HQ on August 29, 2011 in Tripoli, Libya. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

Michele Moloney-Kitts, spokeswoman for Together for Girls, an organization aiming to end violence against children, says it works.

“We have been struck by (Murabit) as such a critical leader, the fact that she is a Muslim woman who is a pediatrician, who understands violence,” she says.

“She is leading a campaign that is so appropriate, culturally driven, based in her case on the Qur’an and Islam. We have seen faith communities really standing up against violence.”

Murabit says that concerns about violent extremism in the Middle East highlight the importance of women’s participation in conflict mediation.

“Part of the main reason that (extremists) have been able to be successful is that there are political and economic vacuums, because half of society is not represented, half of society feel they do not have a role,” says Murabit, adding that the right to education is essential for encouraging participation.

It’s a message that has been touted by Malala Yousafzai, who at 17 recently became the world’s youngest Nobel laureate for her activism. In 2012, a Taliban gunman shot her in the head while she was returning from school in Pakistan, because of her vocal support for gender equality and education for girls.

“Her message is the kind of message we need to be delivering everywhere,” says Murabit, adding that Yousafzai is a good friend.

“If you can empower women economically, politically, if you can empower them socially, it completely changes the international dynamic.”

A rebel fighter celebrates as his comrades fire a rocket barrage toward the positions of troops loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi April 14, 2011 west of Ajdabiyah, Libya. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Q employees not questioned during CBC’s Ghomeshi probe despite claims of serious investigation: report

Jian Ghomeshi makes his way through a mob of media with his lawyer Marie Henein (right) at a Toronto court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

By Joseph Brean

Despite claiming to have undertaken a serious internal investigation of the Jian Ghomeshi affair, CBC executives did not ask a single Q employee a single question, according to an investigation by the CBC investigative program the fifth estate.

The program surveyed 17 people who worked on the arts radio show last summer, and spoke with everyone but the former executive producer.

“No one said they’d been approached [by management], no questions ever asked,” said Gillian Findlay, host of the fifth estate, airing Friday night.

Her name is known to few, but her case made headlines for years in Montreal.

In late 2011, an 18-year-old Concordia University student accused three McGill University football players of sexually assaulting her after she and a friend were invited to their apartment.

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Chris Boyce, head of CBC Radio, said he could not, and that it was a question for Janice Rubin, the outside counsel hired to probe the institutional response.

The finding is the most shocking revelation in an investigation that pokes holes in the official account of how CBC responded over the past year to growing evidence of Mr. Ghomeshi’s behaviour, both within the CBC and in his private life. He now faces criminal charges of sexual assault and overcoming resistance by choking.

It also reports Mr. Ghomeshi lied in his notorious Facebook post about being offered the chance to walk away quietly before he was fired, to leave the impression it was his own decision.

Jian Ghomeshi leaves Toronto’s Yonge and College Courthouse after making bail. [Peter J. Thompson/National Post]

“That is untrue,” said Mr. Boyce. He said Mr. Ghomeshi was offered 24 hours to provide more information, possibly about a mental illness. “He was very upset, he maintained his innocence and beyond that, I’m not comfortable getting into details.”

The fifth estate investigation does not reveal new alleged victims, and many of the accounts have been previously reported. None are named.

The investigation advances the theory that CBC might have been slow to take action against its most marketable star.

In interviews with two former producers, Sean Foley and Brian Coulton, it describes how Mr. Ghomeshi “broke down” and confessed to them while on location in Winnipeg last spring, saying he likes rough sex and an angry ex-girlfriend is “threatening to tell everybody.” He said he was confident he had done nothing illegal.

Later, Mr. Ghomeshi revealed to his producers that someone was posting allegations about him on Twitter under the name @BigEarsTeddy, which is a toy bear he uses for anxiety relief. Neither knew what to do. One started having panic attacks.

In late June, independent journalist Jesse Brown, who has partnered in his investigation with the Toronto Star, sent an email to Q employees, laying out the allegations as he understood them, specifically mentioning the crime of assault, and saying the “inappropriate behaviour may have crossed over into the workplace.”

Mr. Foley and Mr. Coulton went to their superiors with this email and the Twitter account, confident the CBC would take it seriously. Mr. Boyce said none of the material they presented was new to executives, and that the “majority” was not about the workplace. Mr. Boyce said he believed the tweets, at least, were “inaccurate.” But CBC did investigate.

Radio host and author Jian Ghomeshi. Darren Calabrese/National Post

CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson said the investigation consisted of a review of Mr. Ghomeshi’s file, cross-referenced with other disciplinary issues, and interviews conducted “very discreetly” with a cross-section of managers, program leaders and Qemployees. He said it found no evidence of sexual harassment.

In the fifth estate show, Mr. Boyce said the CBC did not seek more information from theToronto Star about what it knew of the alleged victims, nor try to find out who was behind the @BigEarsTeddy account.

“Our job is not to be the police,” he said. Even as the CBC fired Mr. Ghomeshi, based on what has been described as evidence of assault, it did not go to police. Mr. Boyce said, in hindsight, if he could do it again, he might have done so.

@JosephBrean

Emails show Tories went over RCMP commissioner’s head with muskrat hat order

Under mounting pressure from animal-rights activists, the RCMP is testing a synthetic alternative to its standard-issue muskrat hat. Though not as famous as the postcard Mountie's buff-coloured stetson, the blue-topped, flap-eared fur cap has been in use for 70 years and in such a wintry country is the police force's real headgear workhorse. Photo: Postmedia News files

When the Conservative government announced two months ago that it was ordering the RCMP to reverse its decision to curtail the use of muskrat fur hats, it raised questions among bureaucrats over whether the government had the authority to do so, internal emails show.

The emails, obtained by Postmedia News under access-to-information laws, suggested that in the past three decades there had never been any written orders — known as ministerial directives — related to what Mounties wear and that such decisions were the domain of RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson.

“From a legal perspective, there do not appear to be any prior Ministerial Directives (we have gone back to 1981) that would provide a precedent for the Minister directing the RCMP with regard to uniform/headwear,” Mark Potter, director general within Public Safety Canada’s law enforcement and policing branch, wrote to his colleagues on Oct. 1.

“Also, the regulations flowing from the RCMP Act indicate that the Commissioner is responsible for non-formal uniform/headwear decisions.”

Nevertheless, the RCMP complied with the government’s wishes and will allow members the choice of sticking with the traditional muskrat fur hats or wearing new wool toques in the winter, a spokesman confirmed Friday.

Sgt. Greg Cox said a contract for the toques will be awarded in the near future. “Once both hats are available, they will be issued to members who will have a choice as to which winter hat best suits their climate and operational needs,” he said.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney refused to say whether a formal ministerial directive had been issued to the RCMP. “Our Government agrees with the RCMP decision to ensure that all RCMP members have access to the iconic muskrat fur winter hat,” Jason Tamming said in an email.

Giving members a choice over wool or fur hats was not what the RCMP had wanted.

In late September, the RCMP announced that it was undertaking a “significant move away” from the use of muskrat fur in its winter hats in favour of merino wool toques after listening to the concerns of the public and employees.

The wool toques would become the new “standard” winter head dress. The muskrat fur hats would be reserved only to those working in “extreme winter conditions.”

Media lines prepared at the time noted that there would be a cost savings as well. The fur hats cost about $48 each, whereas the wool toques cost about $20.

The decision was hailed as a victory by The Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals.

But on Sept. 30, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq told the House of Commons that the government would “stand up for Canada’s hunters and trappers,” and that Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney was taking action to ensure that the fur winter hats would not be discontinued.

“The RCMP decision, which is causing much glee among anti-fur activists, is being fully overturned,” she said.

That afternoon, Meribeth Morris, a senior departmental assistant in the public safety minister’s office, sent an email to Lynne Cyr, a special advisor in Public Safety Canada’s law enforcement and policing branch, asking that a ministerial directive be drafted by the next day.

The directive “should be based on freedom of choice” for members to decide whether they wish to be issued wool or fur hats, Morris wrote.

The next day a proposed directive was drafted. It stated, “I direct that the RCMP maintain its current policy … as it relates to fur hats to its members and cadets.”

But the wording created some confusion. By reverting to the original policy, did this mean wool hats would be scrapped altogether, asked Kathy Thompson, assistant deputy minister in Public Safety Canada. “So when they say return to original, where’s the choice?” she asked.

Thompson also wondered whether the RCMP had been consulted to determine whether the force still had a supplier for the fur hats.

Internal emails suggested that instead of a written order, the minister’s office would work informally with the RCMP on developing a hat policy that respected the government’s objectives and met the RCMP’s operational requirements.

Dquan@Postmedia.com

20 weird, annoying or simply inexplicable Christmas tunes

Does the annual onslaught of Christmas music turn you into a Grinch? Photo: Universal Studios

The annual aural onslaught has begun.

Tis the season for consumptive glut, too many cookies and, of course, Christmas music. Love it or hate it or tune it out, it’s already blasting through stores across Canada, and it’s not even December yet.

Christmas time has become the season of the perpetual ear worm.

But not all festive ditties are created equal. Some are mind-numbingly annoying, while some lesser-known and off-beat tracks are just plain funny. In honour of the unofficial start to the holiday season (it’s the day after American Thanksgiving, and the elephant is nudging us) here’s a round of up the weirdest and most annoying Christmas tunes known to humankind — including one song we have officially dubbed “THE WORST.”

Author’s note: Please weigh in in the comments with your own most hated tunes, and let us know about any wacky ones we may have missed. And, if you are one of those rare beasts who loves all things yuletide, please offer your thoughts on the best holiday songs. We’ll round those up later in the season.

The annual annoyances

Some Christmas tunes are timeless in their irritation. These picks, as suggested by Canada.com staff and our readers online, are the perpetual offenders.

You know what kid, Santa does mind, and so do I. Ask for something normal.

Ok, a hoola-hoop isn’t any less annoying.

Nor are teeth. Perhaps just ditch the whole song-about-gifts thing. I though the season was about love and family?

This one is annoying for pure repetition

Another on the list for its sheer repetition. If you have ever worked retail at Christmas, you know how crazy this song can make you.

The weirdest tunes

There are some lesser-known holiday-themed songs our readers suggested that are just weird, wacky or bizarre.

Blue Christmas isn’t the best song to begin with, and the jury’s still out as to whether Porky Pig makes it worse or improves upon the crap.

Nothing says Christmas like racial stereotypes and a jaunty 1960s tune.

Oh look, more stereotypes.

Is Elmo promoting violence against women? This is just upsetting. But she drank too much egg nog, so she totally had it coming, right?

The not-so-subtle entendres

These tunes made the list because their hidden meanings are either offensive or the source of dinner-table debate every year.

This song is both annoying and confusing: is mommy mixing adultery with Christmas joy, or is that daddy dressed up as Santa Claus?

Ok, so the originally Eartha Kitt version of this song is pretty great, but it’s one of those songs that’s overplayed so often it’s become unbearable. Also, rent-cheque-writing sugar Santas are just so last century.

A lot of people have fond memories of this song, and it even won an Academy Award. Many have parsed its lyrics as a “date rape anthem” — but the original version as included above shows it’s meant to be sung by either gender, and could be more a tongue-in-cheek comment on premarital sex conventions of the time.

When pop stars invade the holidays

Whether it’s a wacky remake or a misguided charitable endeavor, these songs prove some celebrities should just take the holidays off. There are actually so many terrible carols from flailing popstars and those looking to make a quick buck, that this is a much shorter list than it could have been.

Justin Bieber ruins everything. Also, isn’t Maria Carey like old enough to be his mom? Creepy. (It should be noted, the traditional version of this song, as celebrated in Love Actually, is perfect.)

Last Christmas, I prayed you’d go away this year, Wham! But oh, you’re still here, and so is this terrible song.

Maybe Faith Hill can’t find Christmas because it’s avoiding being associated with this terrible song.

Band Aid is back this year, but the original has annoyed and befuddled for years. Yes, be thankful you get to enjoy all the excesses of Christmas in the West while others suffer: “Thank God, tonight’s it’s them instead of you.”

If you ever thought, hey, you know what Christmas needs? More 80s hair metal.

I WAS having a wonderful Christmas time until I heard this, Mr. McCartney.

Another former Beatles’ annoying tune that haunts us every year because the boomers still control everything. It’s also the perfect liberal guilt swoon: donate some change to alleviate your guilt. And then Celine Dion made it worse.

THE WORST

Not only is this song depressing, but it’s been described as “poverty porn.” We are not the first to name it to the top of our worst-Christmas-songs list, but hopefully we will be the last, if retailers and radio honchos would just heed our annual cries. Enough! Enough with the saccharine shopping story, I really don’t think those bloody shoes are going to help mommy once she’s dead. (The author has a personal disdain for this song, as the first time she heard it she was Christmas shopping for her mom who was fighting cancer at the time. Her mom won, but it’s another good reason to ditch the worst song ever: people who actually have sick loved ones don’t need to be reminded how sad that is at every turn.)

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Law professor feels racial profiling remains strong in America

"This must stop," yells a protester to Missouri National Guardsmen who were posted outside the Ferguson Police Department on Wednesday, Nov 26, 2014, during protests over the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown case. Photo: AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Laurie Skrivan

WASHINGTON — When Vernellia Randall’s son, Tshaka, attended the University of Dayton in Ohio, police often stopped and questioned him as he walked home through the historically white, upper middle-class neighbourhood of Oakwood where the Randalls lived.

Like Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who was shot dead by a policeman Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Mo.,  Tshaka was a big boy.

Vernellia worried that one day her son might react angrily to the police harassment and get himself arrested or, worse, shot. So she decided to take action.

“I went to the police chief and had a conversation with him,” she recalled. “I told him that we are part of this community. He was white. He didn’t want to admit that it was happening. But I showed him a picture of my son and told him, ‘Look, it has to stop because sooner or later my six-foot-three, 300-pound 19-year-old is going to get pissed.’ It stopped for a while and then started back up with my younger son.”

Randall, 70, is a law professor at the University of Dayton specializing in racism in various sectors of society, including justice and health care. She grew up in Amarillo, Texas, in the Jim Crow era that essentially rendered Texas an apartheid state.

She knows what a black mother has to do to keep her children safe in America.

You can tell your boy not to get angry, but young people don’t always listen to their parents, she said laughing.

“First time stopped, OK, second time, OK, but the third time you get mad and you say something smart and then the cop gets scared ’cause you’re big and now we’ve got a dead teenager on the ground because the cop doesn’t have the training or whatever to control the situation,” she said.

This is the reason why the killing of Michael Brown resonates throughout African-American communities in the U.S., she said. They feel they or their loved ones are next.

“There’s an anti-black racism in the society that dates back to slavery and that has just morphed with the age,” she said.

Many in the black community became particularly incensed when Darren Wilson, 28, the policeman who killed Brown, said on CNN that he would do it again.

“In his eyes he killed a dangerous person,” she said. “His eyes come from his training. And that’s part of the problem with the justice system. The justice system only holds officers to the standard of their training and so the problem is when you begin to train them in a way that makes them lethal for groups of people such as blacks and the mentally ill.”

That training has essentially created a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ mentality designed, above all, to protect the police officer, she said.

Crime statistics prove that throughout the U.S., police target blacks far more than whites. Even in communities where blacks are a small minority, they are more likely than whites to be stopped, more likely to be arrested and suffer more severe penalties than whites for the same crimes.

Ferguson, Mo., is a case in point. While Blacks comprise 67.4 per cent of the population, only three of the 53-man police force are blacks. The rest are whites. In 2013, 92.7 per cent of police arrests were blacks; 6.9 per cent were whites. The mayor is white. The council is 5-to-1 white and the school board is all white.

“Over and over again, it’s reinforced that black life is not respected and I think that that’s why the reaction (to the Brown shooting) is so furious,” she said.

In the last five years in Utah, more people have been killed by police than by gangs, drug dealers or in family violence, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.  Since the Brown shooting police have shot dead at least five black men. These include John Crawford, who police shot as he was purchasing a BB gun at a Walmart in Dayton, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who brandished a pellet gun in a park. The policeman shot him within 1.5 to two seconds of arriving at the scene. The killings occurred after police responded to complaints.

“In the African-American community, we keep amazing track of who’s been shot,” Randall said. “So this (the Brown shooting) became a watershed moment for our community. Black lives don’t seem to matter in this society. This is so clear.”

The issue, she said, is not whether Darren Brown correctly responded to a perceived threat.

“If Mr. Brown had been white and had had that altercation with the police officer, that police officer wouldn’t have shot him because his biases wouldn’t have kicked in,” she said. “It’s not that blacks are getting into more altercations with police. It’s that blacks are having more deadly outcomes with police.”

The U.S. Justice Department and state’s attorneys general keep careful crime statistics. But they don’t track police shootings of unarmed people. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks all firearms fatalities as a result of “legal intervention,” which goes beyond police. The 1999-2012 statistics show blacks are more than twice as likely to be shot than whites.)

Randall said she believes this is intentional. “The reason they don’t collect statistics is because then they would be bound to deal with them,” she said. “So it’s not that they don’t know that the statistics need to be collected. It’s like, ‘Ya, we’d just rather not know because as long as we don’t know then we can’t be held responsible.’ So nobody is responsible. And this is what is causing the anger.”

What’s more, the recent militarization of the police has brought a new robotic hardness to their actions, she says.

“So what do you do in the era of terrorism when you want to fight terrorism without having to pull the military in to enforce state law? You turn your police officers into para-military and I think that’s what’s happened. Then when you combine that training, that change of focus with the implicit bias that people have, then that plays out in terms of African Americans being disproportionately affected,” she said.

wmarsden@postmedia.com

BY THE NUMBERS

Racism by the numbers in Ferguson, Mo.:

Population of Ferguson: 21,111

Percentage black: 67.4

Percentage white: 30

Number of blacks on city council: 1 of 7

Number of blacks in the police department: 3 of 53

Numbers of blacks on school board: 0

Percentage of arrests in 2013 that involved blacks: 92.7

Percentage of traffic stops that targeted African-Americans: 86

Percentage of traffic stops targeting whites: 12.7

Percentage of stops of blacks resulting in a search: 12.1

For whites: 0.6

Blatchford: Ghomeshi’s case moves out of extrajudicial forum and into proper justice system

Ghomeshi makes his way through a mob of media with his lawyer Marie Henein. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

MONTREAL — What grand news it is that Toronto police have laid criminal charges against former CBC radio star Jian Ghomeshi.

I say that only because news it is.

Of late, it seems to me, more and more of the judgments and punishments that are being dished out are of the extrajudicial variety, so I am relieved to see one such matter back where it belongs, in the flawed but familiar arms of the justice system.

The most vivid example of this extrajudicial business is probably still the story of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who to this date has never been criminally charged despite a substantial public record of sordid allegations — a good many of them belatedly acknowledged by the mayor himself — against him.

He was the author of much of his misfortune; he was in the process revealed as a serial liar and friend of bad people, and he did admit to a drinking problem, occasional crack cocaine use and a litany of bad behaviour.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)

All of that is true, but the investigation, as such, was conducted by the press, and as Canadians have seen — when two Toronto newspapers paid money to buy evidence against Ford in an unusual departure from what had been the norm in Canada, and more recently this week, when the Halifax Chronicle Herald decided it knew better than a judge when the public interest requires that a publication ban be flouted (and, presumably, when it ought to be honoured) — the press is governed by its own rules and standards and these are, shall we say, shifting.

The most recent example of extrajudicial justice is what’s happened to those two Liberal MPs, Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti, who were alleged at first by two still-unidentified female NDP MPs to have engaged in serious misconduct and harassment and promptly expelled by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, to whom one of the NDP members had complained, purportedly privately.

This week, of course, one of those NDP MPs did a series of interviews with the media, her identity withheld at her insistence, detailing what she says was allegedly non-consensual sex — or as she says with “no explicit consent” — by Pacetti.

There is no process in place on Parliament Hill to deal with complaints by MPs against MPs. The women thus far have refused to come forward to police. (I suggest, as a friend told me the other day, the Ottawa police make just a tiny effort to get the names from Trudeau and then find the women.) There is no formal complaint of any kind; the two men have had no opportunity (but for what they may read in the press) to know what it is they are being accused of, let alone to defend themselves. They haven’t been charged, let alone tried, let alone convicted, but their reputations are in tatters, as are their careers; yet thus far, no one but them seem to be much bothered by it.

There are plenty of other examples about.

Earlier this month, prosecutors dropped charges of sexual assault against three former McGill Redmen football players after, according to the Montreal Gazette, an unidentified friend of the alleged victim, in whom she had confided, reluctantly told the Crown the woman told her the sex had been consensual. The alleged victim came forward afterwards anyway, to denounce the process and suggest the trio were guilty anyway, from behind a veil of anonymity.

Ditto Bill Cosby, who has been brought down by an ever-growing list of women coming forward to media to accuse him of drugging and sexually assaulting them. He was once charged criminally with such a crime, but prosecutors dropped the charges because they didn’t believe they had a reasonable chance of conviction. Cosby’s accuser then sued him civilly. He settled out of court, in effect buying her silence.

Bill Cosby during an interview. (AP photo)

Some of the women now making allegations — to the media — were among a group of “Jane Does” who were slated to testify at his civil trial.

I never got Cosby’s humour; was he even funny? And in the same way, I didn’t get Ghomeshi’s fame. I do not defend them, but rather the old-fashioned animal called due process.

Given a choice between the free-for-all of a public ruination and the regulated process that is a trial, I know which I prefer.

I know the failings of the justice system up close and all too well. I’ve spent more days than I can count trying not to pull out my hair in frustration in the criminal courts, including several this very week as in Montreal, where the murder trial of Luka Magnotta grinds to a protracted close. The lawyers talk too much; the rules often seem arbitrary and dated; the law is sometimes an ass.

It’s hardly perfect, born of man as it is.

Trying to make it better — whether by challenging the processes, changing the laws in Parliament or making new law by hard-won cases in court — is only reasonable.

But, my God, whoever believes that what happened Wednesday in Toronto — and it was just a physical manifestation of extrajudicial justice — when Ghomeshi and his lawyer were cornered by a wild pack of reporters and cameramen, is better, or offers even a prayer of ever being better, is deluding himself/herself.

Real justice — creaky, slow, complicated, nuanced, just like life and, dare I say, sex — doesn’t lend itself to a hashtag.

Postmedia News

cblatchford@postmedia.com

Blatchford: Psychiatrist’s testimony deconstructs diagnosis of Luka Magnotta’s schizophrenia

Psychiatrist Gilles Chamberland, right, testified Wednesday at the trial of Luka Magnotta. Photo: DARIO AYALA/Postmedia News file

MONTREAL — Luka Magnotta’s purported diagnosis of schizophrenia took a pounding Wednesday as a forensic psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution took it apart.

Or, as Dr. Gilles Chamberland put it, summarizing his trip through the reams of medical records in evidence at trial, “So, this is how the diagnosis of schizophrenia was built, was constructed, for Mr. Magnotta.”

That diagnosis is at the very heart of Magnotta’s defence.

Magnotta has admitted through his lawyer, Luc Leclair, that on May 25, 2012, he killed and dismembered Chinese student Lin Jun, videoed and posted online a gruesome video of the dismemberment, and then mailed Lin’s hands and feet across the country.

But he is pleading not guilty by dint of his alleged mental illness — the alleged schizophrenia.
Chamberland was never given the chance to interview the 32-year-old Magnotta, who refused to see him.

That precludes him from offering “a very strong opinion” about Magnotta’s illness, he acknowledged from the start, because a face-to-face assessment “is the core of (a psychiatrist’s) opinion.”

But using Magnotta’s health records, Chamberland showed Quebec Superior Court Judge Guy Cournoyer and the jurors just how dubious the foundations of the schizophrenia diagnosis may be.

He did it by showing how quickly and on how little information the original diagnosis was made and, how once made, it immediately came to be seen by other doctors as written in stone.

Magnotta first reported having symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions as a teenager, when he was living with his family — including his schizophrenic father — in the Peterborough, Ont. area.
Even then, two crisis workers who separately saw the then-18-year-old recognized that while Magnotta might be suffering paranoid delusions, they also suspected he might, as one of them wrote, “be putting all this up.”

Chamberland quoted a reviewing psychiatrist, Dr. C.T. M’Cwabeni, who in 2001 made a note about the “bizarre presentation” of Magnotta solely because he believed at some future date, one of his colleagues would encounter the odd young man.

“That’s almost a prophecy,” Chamberland said, “and it was 10 or 12 years ago.”

Despite the professionals’ reservations, if not skepticism, by June of that year, “the diagnosis hardly made,” Magnotta was busy filling out the form to get Ontario Disability Support Plan benefits, rattling off the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. (He added a bad back as another reason he couldn’t possibly work.)

It’s possible, Chamberland said, that Magnotta was experiencing the symptoms or, as his own family suspected and later told other doctors, he’d learned them at his father’s feet and was simply mimicking them.

By August 2001, Magnotta was formally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

By March of the following year, when he was seen at Toronto East General Hospital, the diagnosis changed to chronic schizophrenia — a ridiculous one for a young man, and usually reserved for much older, much sicker patients for whom even major antipsychotics haven’t worked.
“That surprised me,” Chamberland said. “There’s nothing to support that, nothing in the records to justify or support that.”

Thereafter, he said, using various excerpts from the records to illustrate the point, subsequent psychiatrists simply repeated the diagnosis — and when they didn’t see any symptoms in Magnotta, which was often the case, they chalked it up to the illness being “in remission.”

As Chamberland said, “When a diagnosis is made, it is very hard to un-make,” with successive doctors reluctant to find that it was wrong in the first place.

“I would be the first, if (a diagnosis) was already made” to echo it, he said. Even if the patient he was seeing was showing no symptoms of schizophrenia, “I would re-prescribe and say it’s (the disease) in remission. One thing for sure, I would not remove the diagnosis.”

He pointed in the records to at least two psychiatrists who acknowledged that Magnotta seemed fine when they saw him, but nonetheless maintained the schizophrenia diagnosis.

Chamberland said there are two hypotheses that could explain Magnotta’s symptoms — the first, that he does suffer from schizophrenia, but the second, which he said is a better fit, that he has a personality disorder, which is a mental illness of a very different sort and not usually marked by hallucinations or delusions.

The hallucinations Magnotta occasionally claimed to suffer, Chamberland said, could also be better explained by a drug-induced psychosis.

About a month before the homicide, Magnotta told Dr. Joel Paris, the last psychiatrist he saw before he killed Lin, that his hallucinations had occurred only when he was younger and using drugs, including cocaine, heavily.

But in lengthy interviews with the two defence psychiatrists, Magnotta denied any periods of serious drug use. He also claimed to remember little of Lin’s slaying or dismemberment, but said on the night of the homicide, he’d heard a voice telling him to “stab it” or “kill it.”